If we want to make the shift to a green economy this century, then we need the workforce with the skills to get us there. If we want to address the crisis of climate change and accelerate our path to future sustainability and resilience, those working in green industries today and in the future continually need new knowledge and skills. At the 2017 Greenbuild in Boston, green building industry education experts discussed employment trends, changes now occurring in higher and vocational education, and what future workplace skills will be needed.

According to Charles Vescoso, American Technical Publishers, in the U.S. renewable energy jobs are now at nearly 800,000 and growing 12 times as fast as other jobs; and there will be 3.3 million jobs in the green building industry by 2018, supporting a $190 billion industry. (In an earlier session, U.S. Green Building Council [USGBC] president Mahesh Ramanujam said the entire “LEED economy,” which includes all employment associated with LEED-certified buildings, now tops 8.4 million jobs and has resulted in $550 billion in investment).

Catholic University architecture professor Patricia Andrasik said universities have been driven to reconsider their missions to meet the market’s demand for employees with practical skills in sustainability and to address climate change, the global ecological crisis, and rising inequality.

In terms of teaching sustainability, Andrasik said there are now even more disciplines involved, with greater interdisciplinary collaboration. Sustainability is now intrinsic to the study of engineering, architecture, landscape architecture, public health, urban planning, real estate, finance, business, policy, and many scientific fields. Because the innovations are coming so fast, Andrasik said curricula are essentially being re-written every year.

Andrasik herself runs the LEED Lab at Catholic University, which offers “applied sustainability education.” Students install and test green building energy meters, read data logs, study dashboards. They are being taught how to “track performance and find mistakes” in operational green buildings, and developing skills in green building management. The course, which was developed in conjunction with the U.S. Green Building Council, is now being used by 25 universities.

Institutions of higher education are also now making even stronger commitments to turn their campuses into showcases of sustainability, using best management practices. Following the birth of the environmental and sustainability movement in the 1970s, universities began staffing up for sustainability in the 1980s and 90s. In the 00s, there was a bump in hiring professionals who can maintain increasingly complex green building systems, but it was really from 2008-2012, as university’s academic priorities evolved to address climate change, where Andrasik saw the greatest jump. “Campus operations are now aligned with academics — efficiency has been driven to a new level.”

Vescoso said outside higher education, in the world of vocational training, there is also a shift towards blending classroom education on sustainability with field training. With these programs, which aim to train building and landscape-related technology installers, technicians, and maintainers, “the focus is now on why we do things a certain way; before it was just how to do something.” For example, the Net Zero Plus Electrical Training Institute in California is a net-zero building that is also a classroom, where students learn about the science and also get hands-on experience with solar panels, micro-grids, and other technologies.

Beyond all the new knowledge and job-related skills, there is also a need for new workplace skills. For Elaine Aye, with Green Building Services, employees in fast-moving green industries need to be “adaptive, independent, collaborative, creative, innovative, and self-directed” in pursuing the triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental benefits.

Multiple decades into her own career, Aye explained how she has gotten four certifications in the past decade in order to stay up to date. “I have to keep my mind alert and learn to adapt.” And she said more employees are like her and demand training through in person or online tools so they can continually improve their own skills.

The workplace itself is also constantly changing: it’s now “the most diverse ever,” in terms of age, social and cultural differences, and educational backgrounds.

A post shared by National ASLA (@nationalasla) on Apr 4, 2017 at 6:57am PDT

Each April World Landscape Architecture Month (WLAM) celebrates all aspects of landscape architecture. The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) asked its members and followers to share pictures of their favorite examples of landscape architecture on social media with #WLAM2017 and a card that reads, “This Is Landscape Architecture.” The goal of the campaign is to educate the public about the profession and all it entails.

This year, approximately 1,700 people from 57 different countries posted nearly 7,000 times with #WLAM2017, reaching 2.9 million people. Each day during WLAM a different ASLA chapter took over our Instagram so we could show the breadth of the field.

For example, the Iowa Chapter decided to highlight off some of its public spaces.

Saving Bertha: The Effort to Turn a Piece of Seattle History into Art– Seattle Magazine, 4/20/17
“After Bertha’s dramatic emergence from the nearly 2-mile-long tunnel she diligently, if erratically, drilled in service of a new, underground stretch of SR 99 (and re-opened Seattle waterfront), a certain post-drill pallor has descended upon the city. After all the fanfare and ceremony—not to mention millions of tax dollars—Bertha is scheduled to be dissembled and sold off for scrap, and soon.”

Using RPGs to Solve Environmental Problems– PC Magazine, 4/21/17
“Landscape architects at North Carolina State University developed open-source modeling software that uses the basics of role-playing games to help solve environmental problems.”

World Landscape Architecture Month: Let’s Celebrate All Things Green – The Missoulian, 4/25/17
“It’s been a long, hard winter here in western Montana, what with blizzards, sub-zero temperatures and lots of snow. As spring slowly emerges, it’s time to celebrate all things green. Let’s celebrate April – it’s World Landscape Architecture Month.”

São Paulo’s Mayor Tries to Make the City Greener– The Economist, 4/27/17
“The phrase ‘concrete jungle’ might have been coined for São Paulo. Brazil’s megalopolis has 2.6 square meters of green space for each of its 11 million inhabitants, a tenth as much as New York and a fifth of what the World Health Organization recommends.”

Understanding What Makes Plants Happy – The New York Times, 4/30/17
“First, we have to understand that plants are social creatures. Our garden plants evolved as members of diverse social networks.”

Gardens by France’s Most Revered Landscape Designer – The New York Times, 10/12/16
“Gardens are ‘an expression of faith’ and ‘the embodiment of hope,’ wrote the revered English landscape architect Russell Page in his memoir, The Education of a Gardener, in 1962.”

How to Remake San Jose’s St. James Park– The Mercury News, 10/12/16
“San Jose will host one of the more fascinating design competitions in its history: The ambitious goal is to try to remake downtown’s most gaping urban sore, St. James Park.”

Neighbors Group Pitches in on Caring for Washington Square Trees– The San Francisco Chronicle, 9/29/16
“Trees maintenance is technically the city’s responsibility, but Friends of Washington Square Park spent $10,000 in 2010 to prune and assess the canopy. Now, the group is working with the city’s Recreation and Park Department to update that assessment with HortScience, a horticulture consultant.”

Is City Ready to Fulfill Broken Pledge for ‘World-Class’ Park at Miami Marine Stadium?– The Miami Herald, 9/29/16
“Almost a year after the city of Miami hurriedly spent $18 million to accommodate the Miami International Boat Show at the historic Miami Marine Stadium’s vast parking lot, administrators said they will seek to hire a “world-class” design firm to develop a blueprint for a long-promised public “flex-park” at the site.”

Driving Sustainability Beyond the Building – USGBC, 2016 September-October
“Can landscape architecture help save the world? The way Christian Gabriel, the national design director for landscape architecture at the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), describes the federal agency’s recent work in the field makes a compelling case for the affirmative.”

The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) is renovating its outdated headquarters in Chinatown, Washington, D.C. to become a showcase not only for sustainable building and landscape design, but also healthy employee environments. ASLA is pursuing certification through the International WELL Building Institute’s WELL standard. In a session organized by the Institute and DC chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), representatives from WELL, ASLA, and ASLA’s architects at Gensler explained why they are taking this approach and what well-being will look like in the new headquarters.

WELL, according to its website, is a “performance-based system for measuring, certifying, and monitoring features of the built environment that impact human health and well-being, through air, water, nourishment, light, fitness, comfort and mind.”

WELL senior associate Sarah Welton said the standard focuses on the people occupying the building, as opposed to the building itself. The major difference between WELL and LEED is that much of the onus for meeting WELL requirements falls on owner policies.

Nancy Somerville, Hon. ASLA, executive vice president and CEO of ASLA, argued that “wellness is a huge part of our culture at ASLA. And we, as a profession, have a strong ethic of leading by example. We want the building to show the values of the profession.”

She cited other practical reasons for going after WELL Silver certification: It promises to improve productivity and well-being by optimizing light and sound quality; it will help inscribe into the office culture a notion of work-life balance; and it helps make the space more visually inviting.

ASLA Center for Landscape Architecture / Gensler

Also on hand was Joseph Siewers, project manager for Gensler, to discuss how ASLA’s vision for the space was implemented. ASLA’s old office space was “compact and dark,” Siewers noted. One major step Gensler took was to add a skylight to the existing green roof, which will allow light to filter from the roof to the ground floor.

One of the most forward-thinking aspects of WELL is its emphasis on lighting. Gensler sustainability specialist Brynn Kurtzman, who oversaw Gensler’s integration of WELL design, described how the lighting in ASLA’s new headquarters will sync up with staff’s natural circadian rhythm. “WELL encourages cool blue lighting to maximize productivity,” Kurtzman said. Blue orbs will illuminate work spaces from overhead at a 45-degree angle, matching the natural progression of the morning sun. The light will work much like camping does to normalize staff members’ circadian rhythms.

According to Welton, WELL standards also sometimes raises eyebrows when people learn of its influence on office diet.“WELL tries not to ban food, just carcinogens.” The standard also asks employers to limit the amount of sugar and hydrogenated fats per serving that offices may provide through catering or the cafeteria.

Welton, who has a background in public health, added that as a WELL ambassador, “I don’t want to change your office habit. I want to change your life. It’s not to restrict, it’s to open your eyes.”

Somerville said WELL’s food guidelines had definitely started a conversation among staff about the direction of office culture. “It has made people more aware of what they’re eating. We now have the comfort of knowing that what we’re serving fits healthy guidelines.”

Saving Water Is So Hot Right Now in Landscape Design – Wired, 3/4/16
“The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) asks hundreds of landscape architects around the U.S. to forecast the trends in outdoor design for the coming year. The point of the survey is to look beyond industry insider buzz and figure out what designers’ clients are actually asking for. This year’s results are in, and they show people are overwhelmingly concerned with water conservation.”

The Great Wall of Japan Divides a Country Still Reeling from 2011’s Earthquake – Lakes Mail, 3/5/16
“Within months, plans to build super seawalls of up to 17m in height along more than 400km of the coastline of the worst-hit Fukishima, Miyagi and Iwate prefectures at a cost of $US10 billion were approved. The eventual aim is to stretch Japan’s seashore fortifications from a pre-existing 9,500km to cover 14,000km of its entire 35,000km coastline.”

A New Future Post-Chargers?– The San Diego Union-Tribune, 3/6/16
“Ever since the stadium opened in 1967, urban planners, politicians, Mission Valley residents and developers have eyed the site as an opportunity waiting to happen — to turn a centrally located, underutilized plot of city-owned land into something more than just an 18,500-space parking lot and occasionally used stadium.

Are We Greening Our Cities, or Just Greenwashing Them?– The Los Angeles Times, 3/6/16
“Architecture and urban design are in the throes of a green fever dream: Everywhere you look there are plans for ‘sustainable’ buildings, futuristic eco-cities, even vertical aquaponic farms in the sky, each promising to redeem the ecologically sinful modern city and bring its inhabitants back into harmony with nature.”

Houston Stakes a Claim as The Nation’s Emerald City– The Houston Chronicle, 3/9/16
“At a time when many cities are turning once-blighted infrastructure into iconic public spaces, Houston has emerged as a surprisingly fertile pasture – such a model green city that more than 1,300 landscape planners from across America will visit for a closer look this weekend.”

Plans for Botanic Garden Move Forward, Despite Neighbors’ Protests– The Houston Chronicle, 2/3/16
“Until now, the proposed Houston Botanic Garden has delivered more pain than gain to some neighbors in the southeast quadrant of the city. The future garden site is still functioning as Glenbrook Golf Course, and some residents would rather keep it just as it is.”

London’s Green Revolution– The Telegraph, 2/9/16
“Landscape architects in London rarely get to think big. It’s all “pocket parks” and “parklets,” typical of a capital city where every inch of green space is worth its weight in gold, almost literally, and where garden designers strive to make buyers in small spaces feel they’re getting a taste of the great outdoors.”

There’s a Lesson in Spain’s Surreal, Unfinished Cities – The Huffington Post, 2/11/16
“In a memorable scene in ‘The Big Short,’ the Oscar-nominated 2015 movie about the financial crisis, a real estate agent shows the main characters around a desolate Florida subdivision. She insists that the market is just in a lull as they drive past rows and rows of vacant homes.”

Feature: In and Outdoors– The Architects’s Newspaper, 2/11/16
“As more people choose to live in dense urban environments, the latest hot-ticket residential amenity has nothing to do with marble countertops or on-call concierges: It’s outdoor space, the scarcest of all commodities in an environment where, regardless of grandeur, distance from nature can take a toll on quality of life.”

What Happened to the Great Urban Design Projects? – The New York Times, 2/12/16
“American infrastructure is deferred home maintenance on a massive scale. We just keep putting it off until something major — and often catastrophic — happens, and then it ends up costing twice as much as it would have had we taken care of it proactively.”

Can a Professionally Designed Garden Add Value to Your Home?– The Huffington Post, 1/4/15
“This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Capability Brown – the landscape architect renowned for designing over 170 country house estates and gardens during the 18th century. His elegant style of undulating parkland and serpentine lakes can still be seen at dozens of locations, including Blenheim Palace and Stowe.”

See a Rooftop Garden in Brooklyn Inspired by the High Line– Architectural Digest, 1/6/15
“Few cities in the world have real estate as expensive as New York’s. For its millions of residents, the idea of certain amenities, such as a private garden—must be quickly abandoned. Yet one apartment building in Brooklyn’s trendy Dumbo neighborhood is creatively changing all of that.”

The New Dolores Park Will Be Pristine—But Can It Last?– Curbed, 1/7/15
“It was another beautiful morning in Dolores Park, accompanied by the soothing sound of jackhammers. City officials—including Mayor Ed Lee, Supervisor Scott Wiener, and Dolores Park’s Project Manager Jacob Gilchrist—went along on a preview hard hat tour (sans hard hats—it’s mostly just grass out there, after all) of the park’s south end to show off the final phase of the park’s $20.5 million renovation.”

To Preserve and Protect: Working with Arborists – Metropolis, 1/7/15
“As landscape architects we love trees! Be they pre-existing or newly planted, trees are often the backbone to a site design. Mature, statuesque trees add invaluable character to a place and are often a site’s greatest asset or attraction.”

Field Mighty Real– The Architect’s Newspaper, 1/11/15
“Once a quarry, then a landfill, the property at Circle Acres Nature Preserve in the Montopolis neighborhood of Austin was purchased by Ecology Action of Texas with the goal of transforming the site into a nature preserve and park.”

Let’s Talk Water– Planetizen, 1/12/15
“It is important to note that landscape architects have been leaders in sustainable design since long before it became a hot topic. Environmental stewardship is a core value of the profession, and designing with water in a responsible and beautiful manner is what we do.”